I think it's worth a few million of my city's tax dollars every year to give tourists, shoppers, and other visitors (and even homeless folks) a place to relieve themselves.
I have been experimenting on my own network with multicasting in TCP/IP and couldn't figure out how to make multicasting work on a 'interested' receiver basis, it just kept broadcasting the data to every machine on the network, whether interested or not.
Curious about this, because I'm still getting my test network set up. How complex is the network? My understanding is that packets are broadcast to every host on the subnet and they can choose to listen or not. There's still only one copy of the packet on the wire.
Yes, brilliant. An FLV-handoff replacement for Flash would be totally doable. It could be configured to hand off the file to mplayer, VLC, or any other flv-capable media player.
The killer-app for Flash these days is video playback, a la YouTube. This is obviously a bit ridiculous given that every OS has a native video playback plugin, but predictable given that they all have *different* native video playback plugins.
The.flv format (and the codecs it wraps--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv) is now the universal video format, because it works (in theory) in any browser with Flash.
What we need, then, is a FOSS plug-in (cross-platform, cross browser) that can simply play back.flv objects. The code to do that exists in the FFMPEG project and/or the VLC project. If I had a spare million dollars, I would totally fund it.
For B, the router shouldn't need any specialized drivers, or if they do, they should be minimal
That would be true if companies like Linksys and Netgear didn't change hardware configurations every few years in order to increase margins.
Many folks have already mentioned the v5+ WRT54G as an example. In an anti-Moore's Law move, Linksys decided to save money by cutting the memory in half. This necessitated a shift to a different OS (from Linux to VXWorks (which has a smaller footprint)) and suddenly they had v1.0 firmware with tons of bugs.
The problem is even worse when they decide to switch architectures. The WRVN4400S I have uses a different chipset, and--get this--DHCP doesn't work. Firmware is at v1.1, and hasn't been updated since October.
I can't imagine that it's so much cheaper to re-engineer the OS for their products every few years than to just keep sourcing the same hardware, but apparently it is.
Nice work on your OpenSSH setup. You realize you are an exceptionally careful admin, right?
Most folks run standard services on standard ports. Imagine a remote exploit in Apache or Postfix (or in the Debian packages of those otherwise bug-free daemons). If your Postfix daemon doesn't listen on port 25, you don't get any mail.
And what package managers have you worked with that would shut down a service _before_ downloading the package?
True that this solution would prevent a mirror from owning your box... it creates a nice healthy denial of service attack, instead. And if the service in question is openssh, good luck reconnecting.
In my view, mirrors exist so that you can make your own, on your own trusted hardware.
The public mirrors are a nice bonus for amateur users of a distro, but you are under no obligation to use or trust them.
When you have to update more than a handful of boxen at a time, having a mirror of the official repositories on your local network can save hours if not days.
Just *_don't_* send data that can potentially harm you if it's intercepted.
Given that any data on your future p0wned or stolen computer can be intercepted, perhaps you should revise this upwards to "don't create data that can potentially harm you."
The Zero Knowledge idea is nice, but you have to somehow enforce that once your zero-knowledge app is loaded in the browser, and the user logs in, no other code can have access to its environment.
In real world, practical terms this means no third-party toolbars or extensions, no Greasemonkey scripts, no third-party includes, no cross-site scripting attacks, no malware... good luck with that.
I don't mean to imply that there is a better way to do it, because there isn't. I DO mean to imply that the Zero Knowledge process is going to give someone, somewhere a false sense of security, for which they may well be sorry.
I think you might have "Democrat" confused with "liberal".
Interesting insight into the quality of political trolls, though. I often think that Fox News is just a big joke designed to take the piss out of both sides of the American electorate, while Rupert Murdoch laughs all the way to the bank.
Self-signed certificates work great, provided you require users to install your CA certificate as one of the trusted certs in their browser.
We make our CA certificate available at a simple url (https://www.example.org/ca/) that uses a commercial certificate signed by a "real" CA, and provides an explanation and instructions on how to install our cert. Installation is straightforward in IE and Firefox, a little trickier in Safari.
Once our CA certificate is in the browser's trusted list, all of the other certs are trusted as well. The only thing to watch out for at that point is name mismatch issues caused by domain aliases and the like.
We considered publishing our certificate thumbprints, too, but that just seemed too paranoid.
I don't care what kind of malware it might be, you can pry the CoolBook Controller extension from my cold dead hands!
Third-party extensions by dodgy developers are often required to extend the lame control panels that Cupertino sees fit to bless us with. I shudder every time I install an update to smcFanController or CoolBook, but if I don't want my laptop running at 170F what other choice do I have?
Signing isn't going to make the problem go away. I won't trust these random developers just because they have a certificate. If Apple engineers had time to certify the code itself, they would have time to fix the problems in OSX and firmware that require the use of third-party extensions in the first place.
You know, YOU don't have to watch at the same time as everyone else, your COMPUTER does. You can watch it later from the cache, and ff/pause/rw to your heart's content.
It's like Tivo meets podcast: you subscribe to an RSS feed with episode and schedule info, and your system caches the multicast stream so you can watch it later.
Of course by that point it won't matter, as all of the cell companies will have bought each other up, and then will proceed to purchase the FCC. AT&T already leased the FCC; it's not for sale.
Customers will pay for customized implementation of fee services and software. Many will go with one-sized-fits-all solutions, 'strue, but busy people without general tech knowledge or a lot of time on their hands will hire someone smart to "just make it work".
This marketplace encourages cooperation over competition.
What do you use ssh for that doesn't, at some point, require a CTRL or ESC key?
I have an iPhone, I installed ssh, I logged into a server... but could I edit a file using vi or nano? No.
Hell, I couldn't even figure out how to exit the editor. It's fine for ssh if all you need to do is run the occasional command, but I wouldn't call it a viable terminal.
I live in New York City, and I have a 45 minute subway commute each way.
The kindle is a godsend. You can hold it with one hand, get it out of the way when people brush past, and you don't lose your place when you put it away.
It's perfectly balanced in either hand, easy to hold onto, and it has a very well-thought-out interface (button placement, menu gizmo). The software is excellent too, and apparently hackable (yes, it runs linux).
The Whispernet rocks. Every kindle has a Sprint EVDO modem built in. You never need to connect it to a computer, you can just email pdfs and whatnot and they appear on the device within minutes. Very slick.
The downsides: - can't "flip" through a book (but you can search!) - battery runs out, no more reading - DRM is pointless asscrap, books should be shareable
Switching back to a real book a few weeks ago was painful. They're really heavy and awkward you know? At least, the books I like are. I love the look and feel of paper, but the "book" form factor is not the best for reading on the go.
Wow, this attitude really sucks. Giving "technology" to kids means nothing unless you also teach them how to use and give them a reason to do so.
Anyone can give a kid a laptop. In 5 years will the child be using that laptop to enrich her life, or will it be a nice heavy doorstop? Software and teaching will make the difference. OLPC used to be about that, but apparently it's just going to be a numbers game now.
Slashdot Mirror
What, do you pee in your car or something?
I think it's worth a few million of my city's tax dollars every year to give tourists, shoppers, and other visitors (and even homeless folks) a place to relieve themselves.
It's called civilization.
I have been experimenting on my own network with multicasting in TCP/IP and couldn't figure out how to make multicasting work on a 'interested' receiver basis, it just kept broadcasting the data to every machine on the network, whether interested or not.
Curious about this, because I'm still getting my test network set up. How complex is the network? My understanding is that packets are broadcast to every host on the subnet and they can choose to listen or not. There's still only one copy of the packet on the wire.
Yes, brilliant. An FLV-handoff replacement for Flash would be totally doable. It could be configured to hand off the file to mplayer, VLC, or any other flv-capable media player.
The killer-app for Flash these days is video playback, a la YouTube. This is obviously a bit ridiculous given that every OS has a native video playback plugin, but predictable given that they all have *different* native video playback plugins.
The .flv format (and the codecs it wraps--see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flv) is now the universal video format, because it works (in theory) in any browser with Flash.
What we need, then, is a FOSS plug-in (cross-platform, cross browser) that can simply play back .flv objects. The code to do that exists in the FFMPEG project and/or the VLC project. If I had a spare million dollars, I would totally fund it.
OP has collateral damage blindness.
Mod parent up.
We trust self-signing for SSH every blessed day. Why isn't it good enough to protect our privacy on the non-commercial web?
For B, the router shouldn't need any specialized drivers, or if they do, they should be minimal
That would be true if companies like Linksys and Netgear didn't change hardware configurations every few years in order to increase margins.
Many folks have already mentioned the v5+ WRT54G as an example. In an anti-Moore's Law move, Linksys decided to save money by cutting the memory in half. This necessitated a shift to a different OS (from Linux to VXWorks (which has a smaller footprint)) and suddenly they had v1.0 firmware with tons of bugs.
The problem is even worse when they decide to switch architectures. The WRVN4400S I have uses a different chipset, and--get this--DHCP doesn't work. Firmware is at v1.1, and hasn't been updated since October.
I can't imagine that it's so much cheaper to re-engineer the OS for their products every few years than to just keep sourcing the same hardware, but apparently it is.
Nice work on your OpenSSH setup. You realize you are an exceptionally careful admin, right?
Most folks run standard services on standard ports. Imagine a remote exploit in Apache or Postfix (or in the Debian packages of those otherwise bug-free daemons). If your Postfix daemon doesn't listen on port 25, you don't get any mail.
And what package managers have you worked with that would shut down a service _before_ downloading the package?
True that this solution would prevent a mirror from owning your box... it creates a nice healthy denial of service attack, instead. And if the service in question is openssh, good luck reconnecting.
In my view, mirrors exist so that you can make your own, on your own trusted hardware.
The public mirrors are a nice bonus for amateur users of a distro, but you are under no obligation to use or trust them.
When you have to update more than a handful of boxen at a time, having a mirror of the official repositories on your local network can save hours if not days.
Shut off the gas. Fire averted.
Just *_don't_* send data that can potentially harm you if it's intercepted.
Given that any data on your future p0wned or stolen computer can be intercepted, perhaps you should revise this upwards to "don't create data that can potentially harm you."
Good luck with that, tho.
The Zero Knowledge idea is nice, but you have to somehow enforce that once your zero-knowledge app is loaded in the browser, and the user logs in, no other code can have access to its environment.
In real world, practical terms this means no third-party toolbars or extensions, no Greasemonkey scripts, no third-party includes, no cross-site scripting attacks, no malware... good luck with that.
I don't mean to imply that there is a better way to do it, because there isn't. I DO mean to imply that the Zero Knowledge process is going to give someone, somewhere a false sense of security, for which they may well be sorry.
I think you might have "Democrat" confused with "liberal".
Interesting insight into the quality of political trolls, though. I often think that Fox News is just a big joke designed to take the piss out of both sides of the American electorate, while Rupert Murdoch laughs all the way to the bank.
Self-signed certificates work great, provided you require users to install your CA certificate as one of the trusted certs in their browser.
We make our CA certificate available at a simple url (https://www.example.org/ca/) that uses a commercial certificate signed by a "real" CA, and provides an explanation and instructions on how to install our cert. Installation is straightforward in IE and Firefox, a little trickier in Safari.
Once our CA certificate is in the browser's trusted list, all of the other certs are trusted as well. The only thing to watch out for at that point is name mismatch issues caused by domain aliases and the like.
We considered publishing our certificate thumbprints, too, but that just seemed too paranoid.
I don't care what kind of malware it might be, you can pry the CoolBook Controller extension from my cold dead hands!
Third-party extensions by dodgy developers are often required to extend the lame control panels that Cupertino sees fit to bless us with. I shudder every time I install an update to smcFanController or CoolBook, but if I don't want my laptop running at 170F what other choice do I have?
Signing isn't going to make the problem go away. I won't trust these random developers just because they have a certificate. If Apple engineers had time to certify the code itself, they would have time to fix the problems in OSX and firmware that require the use of third-party extensions in the first place.
You know, YOU don't have to watch at the same time as everyone else, your COMPUTER does. You can watch it later from the cache, and ff/pause/rw to your heart's content.
It's like Tivo meets podcast: you subscribe to an RSS feed with episode and schedule info, and your system caches the multicast stream so you can watch it later.
On my Dashboard:
Weather, including an animated display of the last 6 radar images for my region.
A widget that uses the "rule of three" to find proportional values (very handy for finding dimensions that fit 4:3).
An egg timer.
A clock with the time in New Zealand where my in-laws live.
That's it. That's all I use Dashboard for, but I really can't live without them.
Customers will pay for customized implementation of fee services and software. Many will go with one-sized-fits-all solutions, 'strue, but busy people without general tech knowledge or a lot of time on their hands will hire someone smart to "just make it work".
This marketplace encourages cooperation over competition.
No no, just 16 Basse are belong to us.
What do you use ssh for that doesn't, at some point, require a CTRL or ESC key?
I have an iPhone, I installed ssh, I logged into a server... but could I edit a file using vi or nano? No.
Hell, I couldn't even figure out how to exit the editor. It's fine for ssh if all you need to do is run the occasional command, but I wouldn't call it a viable terminal.
I live in New York City, and I have a 45 minute subway commute each way.
The kindle is a godsend. You can hold it with one hand, get it out of the way when people brush past, and you don't lose your place when you put it away.
It's perfectly balanced in either hand, easy to hold onto, and it has a very well-thought-out interface (button placement, menu gizmo). The software is excellent too, and apparently hackable (yes, it runs linux).
The Whispernet rocks. Every kindle has a Sprint EVDO modem built in. You never need to connect it to a computer, you can just email pdfs and whatnot and they appear on the device within minutes. Very slick.
The downsides:
- can't "flip" through a book (but you can search!)
- battery runs out, no more reading
- DRM is pointless asscrap, books should be shareable
Switching back to a real book a few weeks ago was painful. They're really heavy and awkward you know? At least, the books I like are. I love the look and feel of paper, but the "book" form factor is not the best for reading on the go.
Wow, this attitude really sucks. Giving "technology" to kids means nothing unless you also teach them how to use and give them a reason to do so.
Anyone can give a kid a laptop. In 5 years will the child be using that laptop to enrich her life, or will it be a nice heavy doorstop? Software and teaching will make the difference. OLPC used to be about that, but apparently it's just going to be a numbers game now.